$70,000 is a lot more than the median individual income. You can probably afford to spend a bit on lunch if you're single and making that amount.
Yeah if he thinks 70k is poor... Woah buddy
I'm not quite sure how to interpret this. Unless you're single in a low COL area, 70k in 2026 IS poor. Or, more accurately, it does not give someone everything that defined the post war "middle class" leaving you working poor or just old fashioned poor. The decision in the 90s to tell a technical-truth-lie about inflation to underreport it by 1-2% per year did wonders for juicing the economy, but now it's time to pay the piper so to speak. Median personal income in 2024 was $45k, but after 30 years (Rule of 70) of underreported inflation it should be almost twice that.
I’m curious: what do you mean by under reported inflation, and do you have any resources to read further?
I make if I am lucky 35k this year. Fucker if I made double that then I could afford this. But fuck that asshole. Billionaires should never tell us how to live.
First if you want to spend $28 on lunch do it just to spite big Kev.
I'm single and make about twice that figure and there is zero chance I would spend $28 on lunch let alone on any kind of recurring basis. People just need to do the little things that make them happy, if thats eating out do it.
$28 is like two sushi rolls or two of anything really.... hell soda costs $3+ and a burger $15ish
It's not that hard to spend a lot eating out even for lunch, it's crazy. Prices have at least doubled in the last few years since covid. Companies are making up for their lost months of profits from shutdown and terrible republican admins fucking up everything and killing regulations and any safeguards or anything consumer friendly. 80% beef costs twice what 95% used to years ago and it's not stocked anymore
It depends where you live. 70k in a big city area barely covers rent on a studio apartment.
Avocado toast all over again. They do this to every generation.
Said the Person with two watches
And whose fault is it that lunch costs $28????????
Okay 🪄. Everyone who makes under 70k will never eat out again.
This eliminates more than half of the customer base of the restaurant industry, most of which promptly implodes. Millions lose their jobs. What's worse is that all that restaurant spending gets redirected towards grocery stores. Grocery stores move far more product with just a fraction of the workers and they will be damned before they hand out raises to share their new windfall profits. This drastically reduces the velocity of money in the economy and drags us into a sudden contraction.
The storefronts those restaurants occupied, the ones that used to be central meeting points for their communities, become urban blight. Those workers, too, stop being able to pay rent or buy much of anything else, which deals a collateral blow to residential real estate and every business that makes consumer goods. The collapse of the restaurant industry and the sudden blow to landlords of all varieties takes a large tax base with it, and state and local governments that rely on sales and property tax see an immediate budgetary shortfall.
These so-called titans of industry cannot see, will never see, that the "wasteful" and "unthrifty" spending they hate is utterly vital. Their distaste for the poors experiencing such luxuries as participating in simple consumption blinds them to the fact that that spending is the economy.
ETA: Instead of the rest of us tightening our belts even more, the wealthy need to spend a lot more. Fund a literacy program, hand a million dollars to a small electric car conversion company, drop a cool 10 million on urban infill, fuck, build a pyramid. Anything is better than sitting on your wealth doing nothing but chasing rent-seeking enterprises like stock buybacks and cloud infra.
Hands up who isn't making anywhere near 70k.
✋
I wasn't for most of my life until I finally was and then I became disabled shortly thereafter, prompting the government to decide that I should live on sub-poverty wages which aren't enough to feed myself because it's easier and cheaper for them if I just die.
From about a year ago. Huh, me thinks he has been to his island and/or ranch:
“If any of you cared about the victims, you wouldn’t drag these women who are in childbearing years now, some of them now having children, back into the limelight, back into the same story, to expose them again to this hideous outcome,” O’Leary said Tuesday. “These guys, they don’t want you to help them anymore.”
What an odd and weird thing for him to say about childbearing and what the victims want.
Bruh, I wish I made $70,000/yr. It was what I went to college for after all only for the entire world to change after 4 years, now I can't afford myself and in debt.
Regardless, this is ignoring the fact that inflation has increased the cost of groceries in general, not just lunch. Even though Trump ran on it, apparently inflation never actually happened now that he's in office. The collective amnesia from the right when it benefits them is just infuriating
When he was a junior asshole, that $28 meal would cost $9.
I personally think food inflation has rather exceeded the median rate so it’s probably even less than that; my lived experience says that in 2019 I could get a meal for $15-20 and now it’s $25-30, but the inflation calculator disagrees.
When he was in his twenties, $5 would have been an indulgent lunch, and you'd probably still receive some change
It's wild that these elites are shitting on people spending $27 on a meal...
It's not 2017, that doesn't buy you much of a meal.
The cheapest food in my town I can think of is still a solid $8-9. And that is for a very unappetizing sandwich. A small upgrade to a chain "Jersey Mike's Sub" puts you back $11.15 before tax - no drink, no chips.
My work recently treated my group of coworkers to subs, but I don't eat meat and didn't have any. Instead, my manager said she'd reimburse me, and broke down the price of the sandwiches (which everyone else split) to calculate $7 per person. So I was given $7 Doordash credit.
$7. On Doordash. The fuck am I supposed to do with that?
Around me, the only meal you can get for under $10 is banh mi. I'm very grateful for those reasonable prices, but I'm also not exaggerating.
Ah yes, that famously cheap commodity of food, that has not jumped in price at all.
I mean good thing bread is cheap and there was no price fixing. I mean someone making $70,000 (above average) a year should not even think of eating more then gruel (not that that is cheap anymore) let alone at a restaurant. Not like the whole system is based on spending money, I am sure a business insider article will fix that though.
Stupid indeed.
Instead of paying $28 for lunch, they should just eat the rich.
Enemy.
i want to jam his face into a waffle iron
That's a business plan I can get behind
I've seen this argument from people before, with avocado toast and Starbucks and everything else, but no one seems to ask why lunch is $28 or blame the people charging $28 for lunch as part of the problem
“…and I’m rich because I make these suckers pay $28 for lunch.” - Rich CEO.
Wait is $70,000 a year a low amount of money? That's an insane amount of money to be considered poor.
Last time I went to a food truck by my office a very basic lunch was $22. And that was before the machine assumed you should tip 18%.
Bro, why aren't you even meal prepping rice and beans for lunch every day, bro? Eat your porridge peasant.
People that can impulse buy outragiously expensive watches and cars shouldn't be lecturing the plebs on what to splurge on.
Especially not food. Food is one of last big joys of life for the commoners. Any splurge here is entirely valid.
These people need to stop getting platformed. If you're in such a position, please just enjoy your privilege in silence and leave us the fuck alone.
He's right, people should stop spending $28 on lunch and just eat the rich instead.
We're not poor because of what we spend, and they fucking know it.
If I've read all the past posts from people in the USA correctly, it's not lunch that's expensive but the healthcare to stay alive.
I mean.... if you spend $28 everyday on lunch, that's $7000 a year, or 10% of your gross income if you make $70k, which is actually a huge amount of money to spend on lunch.
I think the numbers here are rhetorical.
A combo meal at McDonald's is almost $20 now... $28 isn't unreasonable these days.
Dude I got an empanada and a fancy coffee tomorrow morning for like five, maybe six bucks. McDs is highway robbery
Cocaine O’Leary w/ his cocaine ideas again
lets just fucking kill him
Really. There needs to be fear engrained into these oligarchs. They need to fear the working man for good reason. All I takes is one person with a lighter to ruin his world.
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